Bye Japan

We've left Japan.

The last three days in Japan we spent in Kioto and walked miles from one temple to another shrine. Impressive, beautiful and it kept us interested. It's impossible to realize and grasp how much creativity and effort has gone into all these enormous and beautiful places. It's the same everywhere in the world, in Europe we have our cathedrals and castles, communities can achieve so much, voluntarily or forced.

After our flash-visit to Kioto we returned to Fukuoka where we had left the bulk of our luggage and our transport, the bikes in the Toyoko-Inn near the enormous Hakata-station. We have become "members' of this hotel chain, which is no-nonsense, clean, very affordable and exactly what we need. In Busan we are staying in another location of this chain, now very familiar to us. Since we have spent over ten nights with them, we are getting one night free now!

The next morning we pedalled a few kilometers to Hakata international ferry terminal where we checked in for Busan, South-Korea. Tickets about €80 p.p incl. the bike for a six hour way to the other side of the East sea. Funny that, when boarding, we followed the same routing with our bikes on our hands as the other foot-passengers with their trolleys. We were given a 'shared cabin', a space where there were 12 futon beds on tatami mats. The sea was flat, the ride smooth and easy. Exactly on schedule we disembarked, no problems getting through customs and we reached our Korean Toyoko-Inn at about 19.00. 

In Busan, second largest city in S-Korea, we are riding on the right side of the street again, but the first traffic we meet is rougher than we were used to during this last month. We cannot read anything as we could not in Japan, Toyoko-Inn doesn't seem as clean and quiet, people seem to be nosier, there are homeless people in the little park in front of the hotel, we again have to find out what and how the small restaurants work. Things feel alien, normal for the fist encounter in again another country/culture.